Read 1968 - An Ear to the Ground for Free Online

grinned, his eyes moving over her.
    ‘It saves time, doesn’t it? Do you or don’t you?’
    ‘No, I don’t!’ Gilda said furiously and she walked off the terrace. She heard him mutter something and she paused, turned and demanded, ‘What did you say?’
    ‘I said who are you kidding?’ Johnny repeated and laughed.
    ‘Oh! I hate you!’
    ‘The same old corny dialogue. You watch TV too much.’
    She ran to her bedroom and slammed the door.
    The following night, soon after ten-thirty, the tension between Martha and Henry became electric. They were sitting on the terrace, waiting. Henry was smoking a cigar too fast so that it burned unevenly. Martha gnawed at a turkey leg, every now and then laying it down to wipe her fingers on a Kleenex and then picking it up again.
    ‘Don’t keep looking at your watch,’ Henry said sharply, having just looked at his own. ‘It’s getting on my nerves!’
    ‘On your nerves? What about mine?’
    ‘All right, Martha, don’t let’s get panicky.’ Henry was making a strenuous effort to control his own fluttering nerves.
    ‘They’ve only been gone two and a half hours.’
    ‘Do you think the cops have got them?’ Martha asked, leaning forward and waving the turkey leg. ‘That Johnny! I’m scared of him. He could talk. He doesn’t like me.’
    Henry looked with disgust at his unevenly burning cigar and crushed it out in the big glass ashtray.
    ‘You’re working yourself up for nothing,’ he said, trying to control the little shake in his voice. ‘He could have had trouble with that lock.’
    ‘But Abe said he could handle any lock!’
    ‘Well, you know Abe . . .’
    Martha bit into the succulent dark flesh of the turkey leg and munched, staring down at the lights below.
    ‘I can’t go back to prison, Henry,’ she said finally. ‘That’s something I can’t do. I’ll take an overdose.’
    ‘There’s no need to talk like that.’ Henry paused and thought back on those fifteen years he had spent in a cell: an experience he too was determined not to repeat. An overdose? Well, why not? He was sixty-eight. There were times when he thought of death with pleasure. He knew he was walking a tightrope. If it hadn’t been for Martha, God knows what he would be doing now . . .certainly not sitting on this terrace with this view, after an excellent dinner and a good brandy to hand. This would be his last steal. It was, he knew, a gamble. He was healthy enough. There was nothing wrong with him. If he got the money and avoided the police, he could settle in a two-room apartment in Nice, France. He had done some clever and profitable jobs in and around Monte Carlo in his younger days. He had always planned to retire to Nice. But if the job went wrong — and it could — then it would be better to finish his life. With his record and with the size of the job against him, he would go away for at least ten years. That meant he would die in a cell. Martha was no fool. She was right. An overdose would be the best way out.
    ‘But I am talking like that,’ Martha went on. ‘They’ll never get me alive.’
    ‘This is going to be all right, Martha. You’re getting worked up.’ Henry wished he believed what he was saying. He paused, then took from his leather case another cigar which he lit carefully. ‘Have you a pill or something?’
    She looked at him and nodded.
    ‘Yes.’
    Henry crossed one long leg over the other, hesitated, then asked, ‘One to spare?’
    ‘Yes, Henry.’
    ‘We won’t need them, but a sword is better than a stick in any fight.’
    Gilda and Johnny came out on to the terrace. Neither of the two had heard them arrive. They both stiffened, turned and looked expectantly.
    Gilda dropped into a chair. She lifted her hair off her shoulders with a little shuddering movement. Johnny came over to Martha.
    ‘Here it is,’ he said and put on the table four sheets of photocopy paper. ‘It wasn’t easy.’
    Martha dropped the half-eaten turkey leg back on the